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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

hi, i'd like to access to my linux box from a telnet terminal.
and i'd like to see my X window from a remote machine too.

i never have experience on how to setup stuff like that. would anyone please guild me the correct howto to show me how to set that up?

back in school (we were using SGI), what i did was i telent to my school computer, and after login, i was in my shell. then i could even see my X window by typing startx. i'd like to do that on my linux box heheh

I am not an expert at any of this and just use Linux on my two home computers. But, Linux has several options for doing that kind of thing. There is telnet, ssh, or rlogin. A couple of years ago I took a Unix class which was offered online. The university offering the Unix course was 2,000 miles away. I was the only student in the class who was using Linux to connect, every other student was using Windows. For some reason the instructor put up with me doing it differently.

That was over two years ago and I do not remember all the details. With my Linux computer at home I was always able to connect using either telnet, ssh, or rlogin. All three worked well. When running Windows ME all I ever used was telnet. I am not sure if Windows offered any other choices or not.

I used ssh most of the time because I was under the impression that it was the most secure. I wish I could tell you all the exact details but I probably should not try to do that from memory. There is a difference between being a ssh client and an ssh severer. To run an ssh server the correct daemon needs to be installed and running. I belive it is also possible to say that the users can not log in as root. Does anything happen when you type ssh when running Linux? If it responds it might possibly be either the ssh client or the ssh server.

When using any of those three methods to connect you find yourself logged in the Linux command line mode. When using rlogin, I sometimes would open an xterm window and from it run a few GUI programs. I may have also done that while using ssh but can not remember for sure. Once again I do not recall the exact details. I was doing that with Linux. I believe that it is also possible to use Windows to remotely open an xterm Window from a Linux or Unix server. I do not recall what the Windows users in the class did. Perhaps someone else can povide more specific details. To see what a local xterm window looks like just type xterm.

One odd thing about X-Windows is that it was designed with client/server use in mind. The display is sometimes on a different machine.

To use ssh both compters would need ssh. To use telnet both computers would need telnet. To use sftp both computers would need sftp, and so on. I have not done that recently so just now I decided to try using ssh between my two computers. Back when I installed Red Hat 8.0 on my old computer I chose to included some of the server software during installation. My newer computer uses Red Hat 9 and I did not install much server software on it. I did choose to include the client versions.

On the old computer I went to the /etc/init.d directory and looked to see if sshd was there or not. The SSH daemon is sshd and fortunately it was there. The next question was is it running, so I typed this:

/etc/init.d/sshd status

It said that it was already running. If it had not already been running I would have typed /etc/init.d/sshd start. That would only start it manually and would not make it start each time on its own. I will skip how a person would make it start automatically each time because I do not know how to do that. On my old computer I then typed this command to find out what the computer's IP address was:

/sbin/ifconfig

I then moved over to my other computer and decided to log in as a client. I do not remember what the actual IP address was so I will use a different number in this next step. To log in as a client I typed this:

ssh 192.168.17.235

It asked me for the password on my old computer and I was then logged on. It did not ask me for my user name, so in this situation must have assumed that it would be the same user name that I was currently using on the other computer. So anyway, when I typed ls I could tell that I I was looking at what was on my old computer. In this example I did not give much thought to security because I have a dial-up connection and was not connected to the Internet at the time. Perhaps a real system administrator would do a few details different, I do not yet know much about security..

Next I typed this:

xterm &

Then I typed this:

gedit &

When gedit was running I then looked inside the gedit help menu and clicked "about" and it said gedit 2.0.2. That is the version that I use on my old computer, so I knew that I was running the program remotely. On my new computer I then started gedit and found that it uses gedit 2.2.0 which is not the same version. So I was remotely running gedit which is a GUI program from my old computer.

You mentioned once being able to type startx while on another computer. I do not know how to do that but it probably can be done.

There is one other thing that you can do when the sshd daemon is running on the other computer. Starting sshd not only enables ssh but it also enables sftp and scp. While both computers were still running I typed sftp on my newer computer and entered a password. I was then able to use sftp which allowed me to transfer files back and forth between the two computers using ftp commands. Apparently, the iptables firewall on my older computer is set to allow that type of incoming connections. Sometime I should look up what TCP/IP port ssh uses.

I looked at the link that peace provided in his post and found one very interesting thing. It is a list of ssh clients for Windows. I see that Cygwin is on the list. I just remembered that all of the Windows users in that Unix class I took two years ago had to install Cygwin. They did that so that they could practice using Unix/Linux commands while running windows. I wonder if they were using Cygwin to connect with ssh too? I'm not sure. Here is the page that lists how to use ssh from a Windows client: